Can Your Marriage Survive Pinterest?

I have a man who is fully in touch with his inner interior designer.

We are coming up now to our third renovation.  Me, I am not a renovator.  What I am, is part of a couple who want a house somewhere particular, can't afford a nice one, but can (just) afford a crap one.

So we have a bit of a cycle going on.

We buy a crap house in our preferred location.  After 6 months/a year/five minutes of living in the crap one, we realise this is not sustainable and we start making plans to renovate, this generally takes approximately 2-3 years to get off the ground.  We renovate, are very pleased with the result, which we live in happily for approximately 2-3 more years.  And then we move.  Because we've found a crap house in a location we like better.

Madness, utter madness.

Cute as a button? We didn't even notice there was no oven until we moved in.   

I have lived in a house with no oven.

We made it look nice, albeit a bit dated now.  Check out that blue glass and black granite.  Whew!

I have lived in a house with no sink and washed up in a bucket.

I have lived, eaten, relaxed, and cooked in a 3m x 3m room in our Balmain house for 2 months.

I have suffered horrendous Issy related morning sickness while living in the sunroom of our Balgowlah house.  Sarah (aged 3) drew a picture of a huge mouth with sharp teeth at preschool and called it a grumpy thing.  I asked if it was me and her eyes filled with tears and she nodded.

Cue immeasurably high levels of guilt.

Look! No bathroom!

But slowly, it came together.

And in the end, looked like this.  With added bonus children.  The third one is just below the camera disguised as a 34 week bump.

Now, Mike is a bit of a renovator.  He likes it much more than me.  And he is a more highly driven and motivated person too, so when he renovates, the whole world renovates with him.  Well the Christensen world anyway.

He shows our architectural plans to anyone who ventures past the front door.

He discusses at length with me and anyone close by, the benefits of wood vs aluminium or the pros and cons of hard flooring in high traffic areas, and he loves making a good house, from the ground up, not just the bits that show.  He is not just a renovator, he is a renovator with integrity.

Compared to him, I am a lazy assed tinkerer.

So anyhoo, in my lazy assed tinkering manner, I started a Pinterest Board.  I put some stuff on it, nothing to do with houses and renos, but then I found a few mudroom photos I liked and created a board around it.

One of the best. 

A mudroom, for those of you wondering (probably not many) is a room where you put ALL your crap. It is the first room you enter in the house and before entering the rest of the house you put your shoes, jacket, school bag (sans lunchbox which you keep and put on the kitchen bench- yes it's a daydream OK), tennis racquet, runners...etc.  It is popular in climates where you do have a lot of outer wear and presumably a lot of mud, and keeps the rest of the house clean and free of...um...crap.  Theoretically of course.

I am getting a mudroom.  Well, not really.  It's more of a mudhallwaycupboard.  But still.

So as our plans for our third (AND FINAL) reno begn to take shape and we ventured out to start picking materials, I started putting a few more reno ideas on Pinterest, and took some photos at the tile shop and the bathroom fitting shop and the wooden floor shop (after three shops the kids were begging for mercy so we stopped).  These all went up on to the board.

I showed Mike.  He liked it.  He liked it so much he joined Pinterest.

And then he went nuts.

He has now pinned way more stuff than me.  I am his IT helpdesk, and if he gets stuck I have to stop what I am doing and help him.

He now shows his Pinterest boards to anyone foolish enough to cross the threshold (and the plans if they haven't seen them).

He gets upset if someone likes one of my pins and not his.

He even got upset because I had more followers.  I have...wait for it...15.  He has 3.  Me and our two architects.  I have begged a couple of friends to follow him so he feels loved.

Have I created a monster, or a really handy way of keeping all our ideas together?

I think the latter, because last Friday we were able to show our architects our boards, I rang in on Skype and we had a really productive 2 hour meeting.  Talk about your technology.

And honestly, if it wasn't for him and his amazing motivation I'd still be living in the unrenovated house in Balmain with no oven and 1 square metre of bench space and old carpet reminiscent of the previous owner blue cattle dog.  So I embrace my Pinterest loving, obsessive husband, and love him all the more for it.

And maybe, in the not too distant future, his tenacity will help to get rid of this, and wouldn't that be amazing.

Possibly...the crappest kitchen in the world.